SC30: How private labeling has changed since 2013 and what to focus on in 2016

Daniel is on the show today, and he's been selling on Amazon since 2012, first using retail arbitrage and then shifting focus to private labeling in 2013. Because Daniel has been selling for such a long time, he has a unique perspective of what the business was like before and what it takes to succeed today. He also shares plenty of his mistakes along the way.

You'll enjoy this episode, especially if you want to get a sense of the direction that selling on Amazon is heading in the future.

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Get involved and ask a question about selling on Amazon and Chris may answer your question live on a future episode of Sellercast. Also, if you think you'd be a good guest for the Sellercast podcast feel free to tell us more about you and your company here.

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Podcast Transcript

Intro: Hello everyone, Chris Guthrie here, host of Sellercast. And in today’s episode, I speak with Daniel, who has been selling on Amazon since 2012. He switched to private labeling in 2013 and because he has been selling on Amazon for so long, he has a unique perspective in terms of what he’s been doing to try and further defend his business against competitors and also he shared some of the mistakes along the way because he’s been selling for so long. So, you’re going to enjoy today’s episode. Let’s start the recording and get it going.

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Chris Guthrie: Hello everyone, Chris Guthrie here, and today I have Daniel with me. Daniel, welcome to the show.

Daniel: Thanks.

Chris Guthrie: Daniel, so, let’s get into it. I know that you’ve been selling on Amazon for actually a lot longer time period than most of the people that we’ve spoken to and I’m sure that might be an interesting part of the show that we can focus on. So let’s start with that first. How long have you been selling on Amazon for?

Daniel: I started selling in late summer 2012.

Chris Guthrie: Yes. So, summer 2012. If I recall back to just the various courses that are all out there, some people like courses, some people hate them. That’s irrelevant here but that largely precedes most of the courses that I’m aware of that were out at the time talking about selling on Amazon. So did you learn from a course or did you just kind of self-teach yourself this?

Daniel: I’m self-taught. I did pick up an Amazon course after I’d been selling for about 6 months just to see what else I could learn but mostly self-taught. I got the idea from some people who had done it before and written about it on blogs, but that was retail arbitrage and so, since then, I moved on and what I learned after retail arbitrage has mostly been self-taught and talking with friends and stuff like that.

Chris Guthrie: That’s awesome. So, you basically, so other people were selling regularly branded products, so different types of things for retail arbitrage. Then you thought, “Hey, well, maybe it’d be even better if I had my own brand.”

Daniel: Yeah, eventually.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah, so I guess it sounds like you started a little bit with retail arbitrage just to get your feet wet and then you started doing your own brand?

Daniel: Right, yeah. Do you want me to start sort of at the beginning?

Chris Guthrie: Sure. Yeah. I mean, it will be somewhat interesting and then we can get more to the current time and talk about what you’ve been doing to grow your business. But yeah.

Daniel: Okay. Yeah. So, I didn’t start out with this kind of business in mind. I actually went to technical school for computer network systems and ended up working for Alltel, the wireless company, and eventually I got laid off. So, I was actually still working at Alltel when I was driving to Illinois. I did support for retail stores, doing the computer and network support. I was driving to Illinois. I think it was west of Dayton, Ohio somewhere on I70 and I was listening to Pat Flynn’s podcast, The Smart Passive Income Podcast. It was episode 10 and you were on there.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah, that was a long time ago.

Daniel: Yeah. So that was the first time I’d heard anybody with big success doing Amazon affiliate marketing with niche sites and so it was intriguing. And I thought this is great. I can do this kind of thing. I had read The 4-Hour Workweek earlier that year. I had read Chris Guillebeau’s The Art of Non-Conformity. So I was interested in making money online, kind of location independent business and that sort of thing. And so I was just trying to figure out what I could do. So I ended up learning about WordPress and about AdSense, SEO, and that sort of thing. And in 2012, or 2011 actually, I was basically copying everything I saw that Spencer Haws did. So, I would just read his blog and I tried to do the same thing after I was laid off from my job and we lived in Panama at the time. Cost of living was cheap. It was a nice place to live while I worked on niche sites. So that’s pretty much what I did all day. But the Penguin, Google’s Penguin update hit right when I felt like I was getting some success with the niche sites. So that pretty much wiped out my traffic and I wasn’t really excited about working to build that back up. So I started looking for something else and that’s when I found Amazon stuff.

Chris Guthrie: That’s great. Yeah. So Spencer Haws was on the podcast back in episode 13 - sellercast.com/13 if you want to listen to his episode. And yeah, I was on Pat’s podcast years ago and I think, then again later a few years after that. But yeah, I’ve known him for quite a while and I still get some random people every now and then saying, “Hey, I heard you on that podcast.” My cousin actually called me up one time and said, “Hey, I heard you on this,” but yeah his podcast is obviously really popular. So that’s great. So you basically stumble upon a few people that you start to learn from and then you start to take these things and then work towards doing it. So, your story somewhat parallels one of our other episodes, episode 27 – so, sellercast.com/27 – with Susan where she talked about her background building niche type sites and making money from AdSense, etcetera. And then, again, same thing – it was a Google update that kind of prompted a change in the business model. So, let’s kind of get up to the current time. So are you currently using any of those past skills to help with your ecommerce business? Are you doing things like you have your own website, authority site, and a specific niche and you’re driving traffic to that, to your Amazon listings in some way or building an email list or anything like that or where are you on that side?

Daniel: The experience with the niche sites, I feel like what it helped with most that I use today is with keyword research, kind of the SEO sort of analysis when it comes to Amazon stuff. So I haven’t really used outside traffic. I have a website that I also have my products on a website for my brand but it doesn’t get much traffic and I don’t really have anything coming from outside of Amazon. So, all my experience with the niche sites, that has mostly helped as far as keyword research and that sort of thing when it comes to the Amazon business.

Chris Guthrie: Okay. Cool. So yeah, that’s a little bit different than what Susan was doing. She had some sites that she was using to drive traffic as well. So let’s talk about the actual business then. So are you able to share the number of products you’re currently selling, a rough range, along with what you’re doing sales –wise?

Daniel: Yeah. I have, right now, four products and I’ll have a fifth soon. It’s in production and as far as sales, revenue numbers right now, first two months of this year, have been just over $50,000 in revenue. And I know for new people, you kind of wonder what that looks like in terms of profit and, for me anyway, after Amazon fees, after advertising stuff, but not after other regular business expenses, that’s something like $19,000 a month.

Chris Guthrie: Awesome. And how long have you been at that level for then? Is this something where you kind of built up those products and you started going along and doing pretty well and then you thought, “Hey, this is awesome,”?

Daniel: It’s really gone up and down. I mean, especially if you go back to 2012, it’s been the steadiest since I started doing private label, I guess, and so, last year, November, December were huge, so they were better than I’m doing in January and February. But I would say since…I’d have to look. I’ve been pretty stable for about 10 months now. Yeah.

Chris Guthrie: Okay. And so it sounds like then maybe all the different competitors coming into the space just in general with everyone talking about private labeling hasn’t had too much of an impact or has it had an impact in terms of what you’re looking at doing moving forward?

Daniel: It has had some impact. I think my numbers would be a lot bigger, at least they would have been last summer. One of my products, I had ordered it and then it seemed like while I was waiting for production, I saw other similar products coming online, and by the time I had it in stock, there were five competitors or something like that. Some of my other products haven’t been like that and maybe that’s because of better sourcing or something like that. But I’m pleased with what’s happened so far. I suppose it probably could have been higher with less competition but so far so good.

Chris Guthrie: Okay. So in that case, who knows, it could have been a product that someone recommended in a course or something or there’s so many out now.

Daniel: Exactly.

Chris Guthrie: So then, what are you primarily focused on now? Having ten months of stability is great, having that. I think that I’ve talked to a lot of sellers that they’re going up and down or they’re trying to make it so that overall they’re going up, but that always is a bit of a challenge as well. What are your things that you’re focusing on right now? Are you just mainly working on launching your products or are you trying to find products that you can have a better moat around where it’s more difficult for competitors to come in and compete?

Daniel: Yeah. Ideally, I would like to have products that are harder to compete with. Right now, I guess my main focus is adding more products and, fortunately, that can be pretty easy since I have a couple of suppliers that I already sell products that they manufacture and so I can just add more from them. It makes the whole process a little simpler. In the future, I’d like to have more unique things that are harder to compete with but, right now, the best thing to do is just to focus on getting more out there to get more cash flowing in.

Chris Guthrie: Nice. So the first focus might be just to work with your initial suppliers since it’s easier from a sourcing standpoint to get those products going and then maybe you’ll look towards those more unique products in the future.

Daniel: Yeah. We can talk about some mistakes that I made later on.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah, go ahead. That’s fine. We can do whatever so if you want to get into those now, that’s perfect.

Daniel: Yeah. So, one of my mistakes, when we’re talking about unique products, one of my mistakes was trying to go custom and unique too soon. So this was in 2014. I was still doing, see, I was just starting a private label, so mostly I just imported from China and bought wholesale and sold. So I started to make a custom product and I thought this was going to be great and it was kind of an interesting process but, ultimately, I think it was too early and the process of making custom products takes so long that I don’t think it’s a good thing to start with when you are early and when you don’t have a lot of time and a lot of cash, and especially when you’re living off of your earnings, which is what I’ve been doing since the beginning. If you have another job and you’re doing Amazon on the side then maybe that makes sense once you have one or two products to do a custom product but, unless you have other things that are going and doing well, I wouldn’t go custom too soon.

Chris Guthrie: That makes sense, just the additional costs as well that are associated with that. Is there anything else that you’ve done along the way that you would say, “Okay, well, that was a mistake?” Or maybe we can even, and if there aren’t a lot of mistakes, that’s great but we can maybe focus on what you’ve been doing to try and grow your business as well.

Daniel: Oh yeah. I basically have a list of mistakes.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah, sure. That’s the thing is that you’ve been selling for so long, especially compared to even a lot of our guests that have been on this show, and so even if it was just like, it sounds bad because obviously you’ve been successful for quite some time but as a way to serve a word of warning to others, it’s also a benefit for them to hear that as well.

Daniel: Yeah. It might be the most helpful part of what we talk about — my mistakes. So, I was too slow to private label. Like I said, I started with retail arbitrage and that was an excellent place to start. It is a great way to get started with Amazon but I was too focused on that for too long and then I moved to wholesale and I also imported from China but I still sold as if I was a wholesaler.

Chris Guthrie: Sure. When did those dates occur? Just so we can have some context.

Daniel: I actually started buying wholesale very quickly so, summer 2012, I started to retail arbitrage and then in 2013 in the spring, I believe I received my first shipment from China and I started buying wholesale at the same time. So I was doing, kind of, all three at once or all two at once.

Chris Guthrie: Okay. So, spring 2013, private label and wholesale, and then I’m assuming that wholesales just didn’t do as well as private label and then that’s why you’re only doing that right now.

Daniel: Yeah. Wholesale did amazing in 2013 but basically everybody else could get the same product and I didn’t own the listing, so to speak, so that was up and down.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah. Even hearing you say that you didn’t start too soon, I think a lot of people will be like, “Well, shoot.” I guess what it comes down to really is that for any business that someone gets going and starts to have some success, it’s always like “When should you have started? Well, yesterday, or the day before that.” So what else along the way have you learnt from your mistakes?

Daniel: Well, let’s see. Probably one of the biggest ones is also I took too long to understand how to launch a new listing, how to get the influx of sales that gets to jump-start it, how to gather reviews, and that sort of thing. I knew some of the details as early as 2013, I think, early 2013, but I wasn’t aggressive with it. So, I launched a listing with my first private label effort at some point — I can’t remember when that was — and I got a couple of reviews. So that just isn’t enough to do it and I didn’t realize that at the time. I run out of products. I let my stock run out and didn’t realize how bad that was for listings after I started to private label.

Chris Guthrie: You always hear that you should try and keep your product in stock. What happened in your case? Did you lose all of your existing sales and then it was hard to rebuild it back up after that time because you were out for too long or what happened with that case?

Daniel: Right. At the time when I should have reordered my products, this was in 2014, it just wasn’t a convenient time because of the lag. The manufacturing time for the product was long and then I would have received it right at slow season. So I held off on buying any more and so I ran out. So I was out for probably 2 or 3 months, which is super long, and then when you get back in stock, even though it’s your listing, you’re doing private label, nobody else is on it, you’re back in stock, you still have a couple of hundred reviews or whatever, but, for some reason, Amazon just doesn’t give it the weight that it used to. So when people search for the product, you don’t get the same results and you don’t get the same sales as before, at least in my experience.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah and actually I want to go back to the previous thing that you mentioned too about just not having enough reviews when you first launched your product and how that was a mistake. Now, obviously you know that you need to have more reviews when you launch but I think what’s interesting is, especially in all of the various Facebook groups, because it’s so easy to spread misinformation, people hear about Amazon Terms of Service update or they sneeze basically, and then everyone’s like, “Woah, I don’t know what to do right now. I’m freaking out.”

Daniel: Right.

Chris Guthrie: What is your attitude to some of these changes? I suppose it depends on the change that actually comes out but is your attitude always that you’re going to lean more towards being a little more aggressive in trying to grow your business after you’ve seen both sides of it or are you also a little more cautious?

Daniel: I tend to be cautious but in this, I think that there’s no need to change anything that’s working unless we see solid evidence that we need to do that. So, basically, it’s easy to overreact but I don’t think there’s really any reason to change or adapt until we absolutely have to. So, right now, it seems like we can go on with some of the methods that you use probably and that I’ve been using to get reviews, to get sales rank boosts, and that sort of thing.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah. The interesting thing is that a lot of people, maybe this is their first business that they’ve had some success with, but I’ve said this before: I draw parallels, and you probably can relate to this as well since you were relying on Google before, but you can draw these parallels between what’s happened with Google and what may happen sometime in the future with Amazon. In any business, you’re going to need to be able to adapt but Google made various changes in their algorithm and then people had to change the way that they were building links, for example, to try and rank their websites. And so, they very same thing could occur on Amazon where the way that they, for example, rank products could be impacted and then the various metrics that influence those rankings could be changed as well. And so, it’s not to really scare anyone that’s listening, it’s more for you to think about what’s the long-term? Where is Amazon heading towards and then just being ready when there are changes, because there will be, to be able to adapt to those.

Daniel: Yeah, do you think we’re in a better position as far as Amazon algorithm updates than we were or are with Google? Because with Google, it’s not like if my website is ranking number 3 on page 1, it’s not like I’m necessarily making Google money directly but, with Amazon, they say 53% of sales or from third-party sellers. So we’re making them money. So do you think that we’re in a better position with Amazon as far as algorithm changes or review changes or whatever versus Google?

Chris Guthrie: I think, with the information that I know now, and that’s just basically what anyone else has access to, that yeah, I think we’re probably in a better position. Time will tell but it just seems like, for now, it’s still a very symbiotic relationship between third-party sellers and the Amazon ecosystem as a whole in that they like us because we make them more money and certainly too that the…certainly with the algorithm changes, what they’re most likely going to do is just change the way in which some people may be abusing the system rather than doing anything else. That’s always what Google seems to do and then of course there are casualties that may have been innocent or not, and that’s somewhat the challenge when you’re relying on external platforms. But, again, if we come back to the reasons why a lot of people like to sell on Amazon, it just has to do with the fact that there’s so much traffic there and so many buyers. People go to Amazon to buy and people go to Google to search for information. So I guess I don’t really have any better answer than that and maybe people have different opinions. I just think that, in general, knowing that stuff will change in the future is important so that you can be ready to adapt when that comes. You just need to be able to embrace the change that inevitably will come on anything that you’re doing online.

Daniel: Yeah. I agree.

Chris Guthrie: So anyway… What else then have you learnt along the way? We’re fairly far into this conversation here but anything else that you think that you’ve made mistakes along the way that people don’t commonly think of when they get started with this business? Or if they’re further along, that’s fine too.

Daniel: Yeah, sure. I have some more.

Chris Guthrie: Well maybe this will just be the mistake episode then you can come back to talk about all the successes.

Daniel: Yeah, we’ll do that later. So, this isn’t a fatal mistake but one thing that I did was I took too long to stop handling shipments myself. Now, things are more streamlined and take less time because I have my private label stuff labeled in China and it’s actually labeled for FBA over there and it just get shipped, air, straight to Amazon warehouses and there’s one product that I still do ocean freight on because it’s a slow-selling product but it’s easy to keep in stock. So I do ocean freight on that and my freight forwarder will just put the UPS labels on and send it off to Amazon for me. So, that has made things simpler. I didn’t really mind handling the shipments just because it was all uniform and bulk, but just because you don’t mind doing something doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t find a better way to do it. And so, I could have done that sooner and it would have freed us time.

Chris Guthrie: So you were, in the beginning, you were dealing with customs or you were dealing with the setting up, rather, using your suppliers, DHL accounts, in handling the shipments and kind of walking them through that process and then afterwards, you switched over to a freight forwarder who handled all of that for you.

Daniel: Not quite. I used a freight forwarder from the beginning but I would have the shipments, they would come by semi-trailer to a storage building that my dad had and I would actually go out there and label each item.

Chris Guthrie: Gotcha. OK.

Daniel: And ship them off to Amazon in bulk myself.

Chris Guthrie: Oh, dang. Yeah. Yeah, that’s rough. That makes sense and when I talk to especially new sellers, usually they get at least their first shipment sent to their house because they just kind of want to see the product, I think. It’s just that maybe that some of that’s just the excitement boiling over.

Daniel: Part of it is fear too, I think.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah, that’s true. Maybe a healthy dose of both. Okay, so that’s what you did as well.

Daniel: Yeah.

Chris Guthrie: And again, I don’t want to keep prodding you but yeah, if there’s anything else that you think people could learn from, that would be great.

Daniel: Yeah. I think that’s the most of it.

Chris Guthrie: Okay.

Daniel: The only other thing is — it’s a small thing any business person could run into this — I just didn’t prepare for the big tax bill after my first year. So, I should have been ready for that and so if you want to be ready to put money back into your business, it helps to realize what’s coming.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah. So would you suggest if you’re doing it over again to get in line with a tax professional that specializes in fiscal products, sales, or just in general having someone on your team would be helpful?

Daniel: Just in general. I mean, I had (and still have) a tax preparer, but the difference between my 2012 and 2013 was pretty big and so I didn’t do the estimated payments and so then when the tax time came, I owed everything all at once. So, just understanding how that works when you’re new to being self-employed and making a decent profit is helpful.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah. You don’t get your taxes taken out when you’re self-employed until you…well, I guess if that first year, because then they look at what you’ve done, then they decide if you need to do estimated tax payments, whether it’s quarterly, monthly, etcetera, based on your volume. So, that’s a good point, especially if you’re new, just be prepared for the tax bill.

Daniel: Yeah.

Chris Guthrie: You haven’t stumbled upon some sweet loophole where you don’t have to pay taxes?

Daniel: Yeah. There is that one for specifically Amazon private label sellers who have gone to China, their tax is only 1%. So, yeah. That’s one we try to keep secret but I’m just joking.

Chris Guthrie: Okay. So let’s switch gears here. We’re actually coming up near the end of our time here but I want to focus on some of the biggest wins you’ve had in your business and then how’d you suggest others implement those as well. I suppose some of these have been mistakes and how you’ve turned around these mistakes but anything that you’ve done that’s been, “Okay, this is really good for me and I think that others will benefit from it as well.”

Daniel: The biggest win has probably been – it’s not a specific thing exactly – it’s been basically talking with my friend, who actually you met in Las Vegas, and figuring out the way the Amazon selling game, so to speak, works. So, when I started, I was on my own and I didn’t have anybody else that I knew that was doing the same thing. So, everything that I learned was just going on in my head. So it helps to have somebody else who’s doing the same thing who you can talk to, who you can also share your products with, and somebody that you can trust to talk about this stuff. And getting a different perspective helps to learn faster and so once we were talking about this stuff actively, we kind of like, say, we reverse engineered the ASM course just by looking at successful Amazon listings and trying to figure out what they were doing. Like, how is this guy selling thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of this product? And so once we figure out those little strategies that lead to a successful product, then it’s easy to apply that to one product then another product then another product. So that’s been the biggest win is I guess having somebody else to talk to and figuring out, reverse engineering successful Amazon listings.

Chris Guthrie: That’s a good point. I think that having those relationships with other people that are doing something similar to you and this especially goes to people that are newer, just getting started out. This is really important because it’s so easy to feel alone when you’re building a business by yourself, especially if you’re still working a day job because you want to try and save as much money or reinvest as much money as possible. But you just can’t talk to anyone because no one can really relate to it. They’re talking about the latest TV shows they watched and you’re up looking at products on Amazon, trying to figure out what people are doing, and talking to suppliers in the evening if you’re in the US because it’s the perfect time to talk to China. So that’s a bit of a challenge. So then, I guess the question is how did you meet your friend? Were you friends before in the past or what would you suggest to others that don’t have that relationship and that should try and develop those?

Daniel: Yeah. My experience doesn’t really have anything to offer for other people because we just met. I was working out at the park and we just met at the local park. So it just turned out we were both interested in business stuff and making money but not having to work a 9 to 5, that sort of thing. So I don’t really know what to say for other folks. The first thing that comes to mind is I’m at my brother’s co-working space right now and if you have a co-working space in your area, if you have time to go and hang out there and do whatever work that you can do there, you’ll probably meet other people who are interested in similar things and you might be able to develop relationships that would be beneficial to both of you.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah, that’s good. There are now lots of Facebook groups but even still, it’s more difficult to make those relationships in that way. When I’ve gone to events, just sharing personal experiences, that’s where I’ve really been able to make longer lasting friendships and just being around other people that do similar things in general is really helpful. But if that’s cost-prohibitive, usually you can also look on media.com to see if there’s various Amazon groups. I know there’s some groups on there. I actually went and went to the San Diego group back in February, I believe. Yeah, February. So, shout-out to the San Diego folks, if any of them are listening. But it was good because that’s the type of stuff that’s really a good balance. So if you’re used to just building an internet-based business, it’s easy to not have those human connections, and especially for the benefit of being able to bounce ideas over each other and be more open with what you’re doing in your business is really valuable. So, that’s great. So then, what else would you add in terms of – and you talked about this a little bit in the beginning – but in terms of what you’re trying to do in the long run? I know you talked about some more unique products. Is there anything else, I’m trying to think of, that you think that you know is really, really important for you to do in 2016 to be able to grow your business?

Daniel: In 2016.

Chris Guthrie: And if it comes back to just those things that you mentioned before, like trying to do more unique products, more challenging products, for competitors to try and they can’t source, then that’s fine too.

Daniel: Yeah, I think the best for thing for me for 2016 is just sourcing new products and I sourced on AliBaba initially and that worked out well. I kind of landed with a good supplier but I have also had some bad experiences on AliBaba. I got a trading company in one case and it could have been worse. Basically, the guy just disappeared on me and when I went to re-order, I couldn’t re-order my product. So I don’t carry that product anymore. But for adding new products, I’m focusing on trying to source products that aren’t on Alibaba. So if I can go to a trade show in Hong Kong or a tradeshow in China, I’ve done both of those, and I plan on doing that more in the future just to be able to get a better look at the product, to pick quality products faster and to hopefully build better relationships with suppliers and find things that aren’t on AliBaba that everybody’s going to be trying to sell on Amazon in the next few months or whatever.

Chris Guthrie: That’s a great tip and I think that makes sense too. Going for anything you can do to diversify and differentiate yourself makes sense in terms of where you’re sourcing. So, going back to that trading company, is the only way know that example you knew there was a trading company was basically after the guy disappeared or did you know that something was up before then?

Daniel: I believe I suspected it was a trading company after I got one of my orders because it seemed to be manufactured by a company with a different name. So I think he was being the middleman which was fine with me until he disappeared.

Chris Guthrie: Yeah. I suppose, on AliBaba, that is a potential risk, that you run into someone where they’re just making some money in the middle and finding you stuff but, if they help you do that and you’re still able to make good margins, then that’s not the end of the world. But yeah, if they run away, then that’s certainly a problem. Do you think that’s just a symptom of sourcing on AliBaba and the only way around is to try and do something what you’ve done once you’re a larger business and to try and just actually go to Hong Kong, for example, or go to China, do different trade shows?

Daniel: Yeah. I think it’s really easy for middlemen to set up on Alibaba. So, yeah, if you can go to China, even if you don’t go to the factory and you just go to the Canton Fair or to another trade show, there is the houseware show in Hong Kong. You can get an idea at the shows whether a booth is a trading company or a supplier, a manufacturer in many cases. The trading companies tend to have just anything and everything but if they’re really focused on one product, a lot of times they’ll be a supplier.

Chris Guthrie: That’s nice. That’s a good counterintuitive tip. You know, people think, “Oh, it’s great, they sell a lot of things. I can come back to them for a lot of items.”

Daniel: Right.

Chris Guthrie: But yeah, if they’re doing soccer balls and lamps, random things, then yeah, that’s a good indicator. That’s good. That’s a good tip. Well, great. I think that that brings us close to our end here. Thank you again so much for coming to talk about your experiences. I think that it’s kind of cool that you started so long ago and then, you know, went through retail arbitrage, wholesaling, and then morphed into private labeling once you found that. And also to that tip one, just that relationship with your friend helping you out, you guys just kind of meeting randomly. So that’s cool. So it wasn’t some lifelong friend and you guys have been working together on other businesses. But that’s great and I think that, just in general, people getting out of their comfort zone. So if you haven’t gone to a meet-up group, maybe that’s something that you could put on your list to go and do, and there’s going to be groups around your area that you could potentially do that at. Well, thank you so much, Daniel, for coming on and sharing your experiences.

Daniel: Sure thing.

Chris Guthrie: Have a great rest of your day.

Daniel: Alright.

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Outro: Alright. That was the episode with Daniel. Hopefully, you enjoyed the conversation that we had. I think the fact that he’s been selling on Amazon for so long really brought a unique perspective to the episode that we haven’t really had in the past because most of the sellers that have been on here just quite simply haven’t been selling as long. And so it’s been a lot of fun talking to Daniel for this episode. The other thing too is that this is our 30th episode now. If you’ve been enjoying the show, you can go to sellercast.com/iTunes. Leave us a review or, if you’re listening on Android, you can also leave a review for any of your other listening apps that you may be using. And also, I just want to thank you so much for tuning in. I really appreciate the feedback that we’ve been getting. We’re getting more and more people listening to the show. And it’s just overall been a lot of fun doing this show and I thank you so much for tuning in each time we do these episodes. So, I’ll see you in the next one and thank you again so much for your support so far.